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At the Lectern

AI, the bar exam, and the Supreme Court

April 26, 2025

When the State Bar recently made a by-the-way disclosure towards the end of a press release that some February bar exam questions “were developed with the assistance of” artificial intelligence, it was news to the Supreme Court. Now, the court — which has ultimate authority over attorney licensing — wants answers.

The court has asked the Bar “to explain . . . how and why AI was used to draft, revise, or otherwise develop certain multiple-choice questions, efforts taken to ensure the reliability of the AI-assisted multiple-choice questions before they were administered, the reliability of the AI-assisted multiple-choice questions, whether any multiple-choice questions were removed from scoring because they were determined to be unreliable, and the reliability of the remaining multiple-choice questions used for scoring.”

This is not the first controversy about the February bar exam. See: Supreme Court weighs in on bar exam debacle.

Media coverage includes:

Malcolm Maclachlan in the Daily Journal, Cheryl Miller in The Recorder, Jenny Jarvie in the Los Angeles Times, and Maia Spoto for Bloomberg.

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